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Second (as already discussed). even in the pre-reform period. China made
major strides in enhancing and sharing basic social opportunities related to elementary educa-
tion. primary health care. land reforms. and so on. This led to significant achievements in the
raising of the quality of life of the masses. including a radical expansion of life expectancy.
literacy. and other elementary features of good living. And furthermore. when the economic

reforms came in 1979. China was well prepared much better prepared than India to have
widely shared economic expansion and to make use of the opportunities of globalization.

For every university educated person in China. India may have six. and yet as far as
basic education is concerned. India with its sixty percent literacy and far from universal
coverage even among the young is far behind China in not only enabling people to read and
write. but also in giving the masses the opportunity to make use of the market economy. Based

on its higher educational expansion. India has flourished in many high technology fields and
may now have become the second largest producer of computer software in the world (next
only to the United States). And yet these developments give little employment to the masses.
in the way the more broad based economic expansion does in China. Correspondingly. the
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reduction of poverty has been much faster in China than in India. The situation in India is
changing now. but still rather slowly. and even though India is now quite close to the top of
the league table of comparative economic growth. the potential possibilities of participatory
economic growth are very much higher than what has been achieved so far.

Shared Strategy Rather than Asian Values
Thailand too has followed a path that has been much more productive in making
use of the market economy than India has. This is not just because it has given more room
directly to the market economy a correct diagnosis but on which must not be oversold to the
exclusion of other contrasts. The broad base of elementary education is quite central for the

success of the market economy in a rapidly globalizing world. and in this field. Thailand has
been enormously ahead of not only India. but also a great many countries in the third world
in Asia and Africa. The focus on human capability enhancement has been strong in the
modern economic history of Thailand.

Perhaps. in this context. I should comment briefly on an approach that has gained
some currency in Asian economic thinking. suggesting that the so called Asian economic
success is the result of some grand set of values that go by the name of "Asian values." This
is. of course. a modern variant of the nineteenth century thought that it is some special

"Western" value that has made it possible for Europe and North American to surge ahead of
Asia and Africa. It is worth noting that while values at some general level are undoubtedly
imprtant in the success of the market economy. the grand attempts to explain capitalist

'On this see Dreze and Sen. India : Economic Devel0Rment and Social 0pRonunity (1995). Chapter 5.